It is Impossible not to be impressed by the remarkable range and erudition of the irrepressible, intellectually voracious, Australian-born critic Clive James. As of This Writing is James's most ambitious and expansive work to date, a book that features forty-nine penetrating essays on poetry, film, fiction, and criticism, presenting the most comprehensive view of his writings between 1968 and 2002. In the tradition of Edmund Wilson-himself the subject of the author's most famous early work, included here-James has throughout his career sought to be a Metropolitan Critic and to operate in the vital space between the hack reviewers of the periodicals and the dust contractors of the universities. Rather than shunning popular tastes, James has sought to mold them. Whether in the pages of The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, or the New Yorker, Review of Books, James has written as lucidly and intelligently about daytime television, Marilyn Monroe, and lurid romance novels (see A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses) as about poetry, fiction, history, and philosophy. Moreover, James is a brilliant stylist, so perceptive (and trenchantly funny) that he often renders the twisted cultural terrain of the twentieth century far more accessible than it is generally portrayed elsewhere. Whether commenting on poets like Seamus Heaney and Randall Jarrell, novelists like D.H. Lawrence and James Agee, or filmmakers like Fellini and Bogdanovich, James delights his readers with a wide-ranging energy and critical aplomb, not to mention a literary education that few can rival. Separated into four sections-Poetry, Fiction and Literature, Culture and Criticism, and Visual Images-As of This Writing is the best introduction to James's massive body of work, a book that will give the intrepid reader a thorough cultural education in one volume. Spanning the entire range of his career, it includes, with additional notes by the author, classic essays like Nabokov's Grand Folly and On Auden's Death as well as recent pieces such as Les Murray's Master Spirits and Primo Levi's Last Will and Testament. This is the definitive collection of writings by one of the greatest literary critics of our age.
